Idaho Airships honored for aerial imaging processes 

Anyone who’s ever tried to snap photos from a moving vehicle knows they rarely turn out. Now imagine trying to get a good picture from the cockpit of a plane or helicopter.

“Aerial photography has a few challenges that other photographers never have to deal with,” said Leo Geis, founder and CEO of Idaho Airships. “First of all, your camera is traveling at 80 miles an hour. That’s a problem.”

Add to that shooting through 3,000 to 5,000 feet of hazy air, turbulence and blinding sunlight, and “you have all these really strange, bizarre things that you have to do that people on the ground and in studios avoid like the plague,” he said.

To solve those problems Geis has developed a suite of digital editing processes on Adobe Photoshop that have not only helped earn him clients ranging like the Super Bowl, Walt Disney World and the Olympics, but garnered him an award from the Professional Aerial Photography Association (PAPA) International at a meeting of the trade organization in Tampa, Fla., on Feb. 7.

The group, with members from around the world, hands out awards each year in categories including Best of Show; Best of Category (Scenic, Commercial, Artistic, Air-to-Air); Judges’ Choice; and Innovation.

Geis, a member of PAPA for three years, said his digital editing processes are all about balancing aesthetic quality with the truthfulness of the image.

“People don’t like to look at ugly pictures, so you’ve got this terrible matrix you’ve got to satisfy that includes accuracy and forensic virtue,” Geis said. “Very few conventional Photoshop procedures have been developed to compensate for such challenges.”

One such procedure he uses can be described as “selective enhancement,” he said. To illustrate the process, Geis said he recently took a photograph of the Karcher Mall in Caldwell. In the image, a nearby Cost-Co was clearly in focus but Lake Lowell was not. Applying a corrective measure to the entire photograph would have made the problem worse, but by using a mathematical formula of his own making he was able to break the image up and edit individual sections to bring the whole scene into vivid focus.

“It’s something most photographers avoid, because in most situations it’s getting wrapped around the axle,” he said. “If you’re in a studio taking a picture of a soup can, nothing usually goes wrong.”

In addition to his membership in PAPA, Geis serves as online moderator for Adobe Photoshop and Flash Help, on the Stevens-Henager College Professional Advisory Committee and is the appointed judge of the annual International Iron Photoshop Contest sponsored by PAPA.

His Web site, IdahoAirships.com, showcases more of his work, along with technical explanations of his Photoshop techniques.

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